France’s foreign minister asked the United States to consider releasing Omar Khadr from Guantanamo Bay even though the Harper government adamantly refused to intervene, according to leaked U.S. diplomatic cables.

The memo, released by WikiLeaks, shows that Bernard Kouchner, who was French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s foreign minister until three weeks ago, personally asked U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to review the case in a meeting in February of 2009.

Oddly enough, France, a country which has, to my knowledge, no relation whatsoever with Mr. Omar Khadr, tried to plead his case before the American authorities even though the country of Mr. Khadr’s nationality, Canada, refused to.

Aside from the oddity of it all, that’s not really what made me jump to the ceiling. It turns out – and I do realize I’m about seven years late into this debate – that Mr. Khadr was “arrested” on the battlefield in Afghanistan, wounded, at age 15:

As promised last week, I am giving you a rapid commentary of the Appeals Chamber’s decision in the Lubanga Trial at the International Criminal Court. I was in the media center of the ICC when Judge Sang-Hyun Song read out a summary of the decisions (the full, authoritative written version of which you can find here and here), furiously taking notes to send to my employer. I am also sharing a slightly modified version of these with you below.

It was an interesting experience, listening to Judge Song reading the summary of the judgment, surrounded by journalists begging for Lubanga to be released in order to “have a story” – that is, be given a free field day to tear the ICC down in articles in order to sell more papers. Needless to say, they were disappointed by the time Judge Song finished reading the summary of the decision. Read the rest of this entry »